Not sure if this is agist or not! - but is TV Gardenening dumbing down, I fear it is.

To be honest real gardeners and garden owners don't particularly want to see a gardening version of Grand Designs, nor do real gardeners fall for the dreaded makeovers that simply use decking, gravel and a few plants - usually Phormiums, Choisya sundance and anything big and cheap they can get down the local garden centre!

Gardeners World is a shadow of it's former self, shallow and self congratulatory. It also lacks a real garden that belongs to the main presenter and in the process lacks personality. We can't bring back Geoff Hamiltom, bless 'im - but he was in my opinion, the best of the best. Down to earth, knowlegable and a great organic gardener. He didn't need ex models floating around, he had the likes of Clay Jones, Geoffrey Smith (another sad loss) and many other solid gardeners who really knew their onions from their crocosmias.

I picked up one of my old tapes of Gardens by Design the other day and I was surprised how good it still looked. We actually got down to the real basics of planning and planting gardens, we told it the way it was, with things like budgets and the correct use of materials.

I'm firmly of the opinion that Gardeners world needs to go into retirement, it's not sacrosanct and it would be great to start over, with a new programme, new presenters and a down to earth approach. In fact why don't we call it 'Down to Earth'?